American Steel Foundries
| Private | |
| Industry | Manufacturing |
| Predecessor | None |
| Successor | American Steel Casting Company |
| Founded | 1883 |
| Founder | John Roach |
| Defunct | 1892 |
| Headquarters | Chester, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Products | Steel ingots, railcar frames and couplings, anchors, ship parts and other heavy steel castings |
| Owner | John Roach (1883-84) Robert Wetherill & Assoc. (1884-92) |
| Parent | John Roach & Sons (1883-84) |
The Standard Steel Casting Company, commonly referred to as Thurlow Works, was a steel production and steel casting facility founded in Chester, Pennsylvania in 1883 by shipbuilder John Roach. The company was established primarily to supply steel ingots for Roach's steel mills, which included the Chester Rolling Mill and the Combination Steel and Iron Company, although it also manufactured steel castings. Standard Steel was the first company in the United States to manufacture commercial quantities of steel utilizing the acid open hearth process.
Roach relinquished majority ownership of the company in 1884 to Robert Wetherill. In subsequent years, Thurlow Works made a name for itself as a manufacturer of large steel castings, especially for the railroad industry. America's first cast steel locomotive frames were poured at Thurlow in 1893.
The Standard Steel Casting Company was merged with several other steel casting companies in 1892 to become the American Steel Casting Company. The American Steel Casting Company was itself merged some years later to form one of America's largest steel companies, American Steel Foundries.
In 1880, shipbuilder John Roach, proprietor of America's largest shipbuilding company, John Roach & Sons, established the Combination Steel and Iron Company to take advantage of the growing demand for steel products in the United States. Roach initially used the company to manufacture steel rails for the country's rapidly expanding railroad industry, but he soon discovered that America's existing steelmaking firms could not keep pace with nationwide demand, frequently leaving his new company unsupplied. Roach decided to rectify the problem by founding his own steelmaking firm, and on July 22, 1883, he incorporated the Standard Steel Casting Company on ten acres of land at Thurlow Station, on the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Burwood Railroad line, not far from his network of other companies at Chester.
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